GM Recruits Bilingual Sales Consultants For New York Area Dealerships.

General Motors Corp. announced the launch of its Bilingual Employment Sales Training (B.E.S.T.) program developed to assist dealerships recruit Spanish-speaking sales personnel in the New York area, the second largest Hispanic market in the United States. Through the B.E.S.T. program, GM and its dealers hope to better serve the 4.2 million Hispanics living in the New York metropolitan area. A similar training program was piloted in Philadelphia last year and rolled out to Chicago area dealerships at the Chicago Auto Show in February.

“GM wants Hispanics to feel welcome in our showrooms by providing more sales consultants who speak Spanish and understand the community’s culture, needs and preferences,’’ said Gary Cowger, President of GM North America. “We hope to improve the car-buying experience for our Hispanic customers by giving them the assistance they need to better understand all the details of this major purchase.”

The B.E.S.T. program is designed to help GM dealers attract, recruit, training and coach bilingual professionals for a long-term sales career in the automotive industry. Meanwhile, trained bilingual sales consultants can provide relevant cultural understanding and preferred language capability to better serve the Hispanic market, which makes up 19.8 percent of New York’s population.

“The Hispanic market is expected to continue growing in the coming years and GM has a great opportunity to grow with it, but we also have a responsibility to provide job opportunities so that the Hispanic community can prosper with us,’’ said Felipe Herrera, director of Diversity Marketing.

GM is partnering with Univision to promote the program through public service announcements on Univision.